Five Times Chloe and Clark Talked about Aliens
by legendarytobes
Summary: Snippets from different "missing scenes" from pre-series to after s5's Arrival where Chloe and Clark talked about the truth that's out there.


Five Times Chloe and Clark Talked about Aliens

I. Eighth Grade

"You look green."

Clark turned his head away from the screen, in no way fulled by that plucky John Williams score. He had thought that E.T. was about a kid, his alien, and a bicycle. Chloe had left out the parts about little E.T. going white from some kind of freaky government experiment and men in suits chasing him down with shotguns. It was something he'd have liked to know and probably the reason that, despite the rating, his parents had never let him watch it before. He'd mentioned it one day over a cram session for algebra and Chloe had been morally outraged. So here he was, supposedly studying for an English quiz-his mom would kill him if she knew-and about ready to puke.

But he couldn't let Chloe know that.

He was still the guy here.

"I'm fine," he replied and his voice broke a little. Stupid growth spurt.

She arched a sardonic eyebrow at him. "Really? Are you? You sound a little upset."

"No, I'm not."

Her eyes widened. "You didn't like it!"

"I didn't say that."

"No, put the fact that you look like you're about to run for the toilet totally says it all. You didn't like the movie. I don't get it. It's a classic!"

"Yeah and I thought you meant a fun classic like Star Wars or Indiana Jones. I had no idea it was more like Medical Experiment Theater !."

"Yeesh," she said, pushing a lock of blonde hair behind her ear. "You're way too sensitive. It's happy in the end. You know 'I'll be right here,'" she finished in a voice that was more Kermit than E.T. honestly.

Clark sighed and looked down at his hands. Chloe was cool. She was so cool she wasn't even like a real girl. Wait, that sounded wrong. She was pretty, maybe not as pretty as Lana, who seemed to have this weird hold over him and gave him butterflies constantly, but she was definitely cute. But she wasn't like the other girls he knew. She was definitely not a cheerleader type and she wasn't intimidating.

Well, okay, Chloe was like a Jack Russel terrier who latched on and never let go. She could work her magic to get her way, but she wasn't some stuck up perfect type, not one of the girls who never noticed him, which, for the record, was basically all of them. It could be her addiction to the Daily Planet and her insatiable drive for a career at 13 that set her apart, or it could be she was just so Metropolis. He didn't know. Sometimes, he wondered if it was her attraction to the strange and unusual.

That's not why she hung out with him.

He might be a little bit of a rebel watching a movie his parents had forbidden, but he wasn't full out suicidal. Not that he didn't trust Chloe; he just couldn't afford to trust anyone but his parents. Of course, even if he'd thought of telling Pete before and a lot, Chloe worried him more. She was so big on reporting after all. Sometimes he wondered what she could do with some freak kid who ran to Metropolis in under ten minutes and could lift tractors.

And that was also why he didn't like E.T. He might not have a glowy finger or be from a planet who knows how far away, but he was weird enough to end up in a government sponsored lab if anyone knew. It was something his dad reminded him of every day of his life since he'd really understood that other kids didn't lift beds.

Maybe even before that.

So, no, he really didn't like E.T.

"I just think it's false advertising, Chlo."

"False advertising? It's a rip-roaring adventure story about a boy and his alien. I think it delivered."

Clark sighed. "I know but no one really told me all the awful things they did to him, the both of them, actually."

"But then they escape and he goes home and it's just great."

"Except for the nightmare inducing parts."

Chloe chuckled and then stopped, probably realizing how serious he was. "What?"

Clark shook his head and started gathering up his backpack. "Nevermind. I didn't say anything."

"No, I didn't know it'd make you upset." She frowned. "You said nightmares. Do you have those a lot?"

He had them all the time, not that he even bothered to talk about them with his parents anymore. They were the ones who told him about the lab in the first place. "Nah, it was just a more intense movie than I thought it would be. I'll see you tomorrow?"

"Clark-"

"Tomorrow. I promise to help you with graphing equations then."

II. Post-Zero

My parents are either dead or didn't want me.

Clark liked the windmill at Chandler's Field. He liked to sit at the very top and look to the skyline of Metropolis. He'd never really told his father this, still was scared to, but he'd always felt hemmed in on the farm. He felt like it wasn't the place he was supposed to end up. He thought that was like a lot of the kids he knew. Like Whitney, who he was just beginning to know, who didn't want to be the burned out quarter back running Fordman's forever like his dad, or like Lex who likened running the "crap factory" to a Roman exile to Gaul. He thought it was just the small town itch of someone who wanted more than three stoplights.

Maybe it wasn't.

It had only been five months, five months of trying to adjust to a life that wouldn't make sense in a hundred years or a thousand because he wasn't just Clark Kent. He was who knew what from who knew where and he had a whole set of people somewhere out there in the stars glittering above. Who the Hell knew if they'd ever had farms there or if there were cows or if there were and they were green or something. Who knew anything? He certainly didn't.

It was hard enough to live with normally, but then Chloe had brought up all the questions that were still nattering at him.

How did he even have a legal adoption on record?

Where did he really come from?

What was wrong with him that his alien parents didn't want him?

Clark put his head on his knees and looked up from the buildings of Metropolis to the rest of the night sky. "I hope you're really happy. Cause I have no idea what the Hell you were thinking!"

"Actually, I'm thinking that I'm an asshole," Chloe's voice chimed out behind him.

Clark was so startled that he almost slipped into superspeed, turning to see her. "I didn't hear you."

"You were pretty far gone," she replied, her Doc Martens clomping across the platform as she sat down next to him. "I might have done that."

"You can't take credit for all of it. It's been a bad few days-the cows, the hand in the box for Lana, everything that happened to Lex-it's just time for a think."

"Well, Winnie the Pooh, I still say that me ambushing you and going all Bob Woodward didn't help, did it?"

"I guess not."

"I just wanted to do well on the project."

Clark quirked his head at her and clenched his fist. "No, you wanted to practice expose skills on me and, maybe, you just wanted to use the chance to get answers out of me you don't usually. But I don't really have them."

She nodded. "I'm not going to talk about your adoption again. I mean, you were three. It's not like you were there with the notary or anything."

"No, I wasn't."

"But you weren't lying, were you?"

"I told you I know nothing."

"No, I mean that you think about them every day."

Clark looked down at hands that could bend steel, squinted just enough to see a flash of Chloe's skeleton with eyes that saw whole spectra differently than anyone else. "I really do. I just...why do you get rid of someone?"

"What?"

"Why do you ship your kid off?"

Chloe shrugged. "I'll let you know when I do."

He looked back at her and wrapped one arm around her shoulders. "I didn't mean your mom."

"I didn't mean yours," she replied. "Look, if you were even half as sweet as a baby as you are now, then there's no way your parents gave you up cause they wanted to. Sometimes things really don't work out. I mean, my mom was totally a bitch but I bet your parents rocked. I mean, they gave you the Kents."

"I don't know what I'd do without them."

"See, your bio parents helped you win the lottery. I'm sorry."

"And like I said, don't burn the press pass. You can just dial it down a few notches."

She nodded, "I think I can live with that. So, now that I've snuck off do you want to at least go back to the farm where I can raid the fridge and get warm? Stupid March."

"Sure. Hey, Chlo?"

"Yeah?" she asked, as she stood back up.

"Do you believe in aliens?"

She frowned at him. "I believe in space rocks that can mutate anything. I believe that Area 51 is a cover up, and I believe that if life is confined to just this one planet, it's a pretty stupid design considering how much more is out there. So I'd go with yeah on that. Why?"

"Do you believe in something being so bad you have to get rid of it, no matter what?"

"What?"

"Nevermind, Chloe, nevermind."

III. Post-Rosetta

He couldn't help staring at The Torch article Chloe had run- Aliens or Arsonists. Technically, it was a little bit of both, although he hadn't meant to burn up his own barn. He reached out and traced the symbol.

Hope

He didn't feel very hopeful. Not now, not when all he knew was that Krypton was gone and even Dr. Swan didn't know about other survivors. He felt pretty fucking empty. He was about to head home, to see his dad, to tell him what he'd learned, when he'd had the urge to come here and stare at the symbol that had started it all.

God, he didn't want to be the last one. How was that even fair?

"Clark?"

He nodded but didn't bother to turn around. He should have known. It wasn't even 6:30 yet but Chloe was at work on The Torch. He sometimes wondered if she ever needed to sleep. She even outpaced him.

"Hey."

"It's early."

"Farm life," he replied, still staring at the picture before him. "I just couldn't sleep and I finished chores early. I might go back home for breakfast, but I was just antsy."

"Would it have to do anything with a certain billionaire who has finally stopped spamming my account?"

Clark sighed. "Chloe, I don't know why he'd get into all of that."

"He sent me 2,000 emails, all with the symbol from the barn. The Man of Tomorrow thinks that it was legit. Isn't that amazing?"

"Completely," he replied dryly.

Chloe walked up so that she stood shoulder to shoulder with him, staring also at the 'mystery' symbol on his barn. "It does make you wonder, right? I mean what if this is actually legit? What if an advanced race came to Earth and-"

"Was obsessed with my barn. They liked the design of the loft. Come on Chloe!"

"You don't have to snap about it. I just think it's so amazing. I mean, what if we weren't alone in the universe?"

"And what if we are?" he said, his voice quiet. For all he knew they were. The Kryptonians were gone. What if it was back to Earth being all the civilization in the universe? It could be that desolate, couldn't it?

It felt that way.

"I refuse to believe that. There's something more out there."

Clark sighed and turned away from the wall. "I wish I believed that."

"So you're going to be small minded and go there's no one else out there?"

"It's not that I don't want there to be," and God how he did. "I just don't think there are. It's a KU frat prank, Chlo. That's the truth. It's not out there, it's in the bottom of keg."

"You're almost cynical enough to work here, but Clark-"

"Chlo, could you think of taking that one down. Just this once, for me?"

"It's news."

"I knew you'd see it that way," he replied, exiting out the door. Even if he thought she'd take it well and she was nothing if not dedicated to the bizarre, he couldn't tell her. Not if he wanted to remain off that wall.

IV. Post-Truth

"God, my head still hurts," Chloe replied, taking the cold pack he was offering her.

Clark nodded from his corner of the loft sofa. "That's what happens when you get dosed with K...meteor rock drugs."

"Did you say something before that?"

"Just coughing," he covered. Sometimes it was hard to remember that not everyone was as in on things as Pete and his parents were. It was almost second nature now to refer to the rocks as Kryptonite, to think back on the parts of his planet that had hurt Lex and Lana and now Chloe at least for a few days.

"I see," she said, placing the bag on her forehead. "I feel terrible."

"I can tell."

"And I was such a bitch."

"We covered that. I know that you like to push and what happened was not all you. You don't want to destroy people's lives like that and we all know it."

"But I almost did horrible things against you."

"And you were drugged. Trust me, after how you saw me in Metropolis...I know something about behaving in ways you'd regret. This is no different than the parasite."

"Except I remember everything in crystal clear detail. I know what I did and it was pretty terrible."

"It was being sick," he replied, still not sure himself how much of the driven reporter was Chloe and how much was the drug. He know she'd never ruin a teacher's life or take glee in exposing the football team the way she had, but she always wanted to know about his past. It was the big roadblock between them and it existed in a way that the same facts didn't between him and Lana or him and Lex. With Lex, it was more the fear that Lionel would find out by proxy, force it out of his son or spy on him. With Lana, it was rejection, but with Chloe it was still that fear that if she knew...

"I can't believe you're letting me crash and taking care of me. If I were you, I'd have kicked me out."

"Like I said, we all make mistakes."

"You, Clark, are too good to be true."

He shook his head and placed another pillow under her head. "No, I'm not. I just think you understand things more."

"I do?"

"You've spent the last four years tracing the effects of the rocks and telling the stories of the meteor freaks who turned out to be dangerous, but you finally got a taste of what it's like to have a power."

"Yeah," she said, her eyes still clamped shut. "I got a taste of what it was like to destroy someone and I might have gotten a lot power hungry."

"And sick! I'm going to make like a bumper sticker or a tattoo for you so you remember. But you get it now."

"A little more and it's scary."

"It really is. Knowing that if you wanted to, you could really do anything you wanted, have anyone at your mercy. It's so incredibly tempting."

Chloe finally opened her eyes and they were glittering with curiosity and the serum had nothing to do with it. "We never really got to talk about Metropolis, about how you afforded everything."

Clark shook his head. "I can't."

"When you say that I get it..."

"I can't."

"Clark-"

"I'm just glad you're okay. Let's just forget about serums or Lionel or anything between us. It's okay, at least for right now."

"So we just look at the stars?"

"Yup."

She nodded and propped her feet up on his lap. "So, do you still think we're alone out there?"

"Not exactly."

"And the reason for the one-eighty?"

"Maybe my best friend keeps me from being myopic," he quipped, but, really, it was thoughts of Jor-El, of whatever his alien destiny held that kept him from deciding his home planet was as dead as it was supposed to be. At least the technology had survived, how lucky for him.

"And maybe mine keeps me from being Darth Vader."

"Bad analogy, Chlo," he said, knocking her feet back off his lap.

That might be him.

V. Post-Arrival

"So, now we know," Chloe said, smiling awkwardly back at him from the bottom of the loft steps.

"Yeah, uh, I'm from another planet and you knew about my powers for months. Surprise." He was being more sarcastic than he meant to but after the shock of saving her had worn off and the added shock of having his powers removed had just flared up, his patience was now non-existent.

"We can pretend I don't know," she offered. "We can just go back to how it was. I hint too broadly, you pretend you didn't get the double meaning, and we just let the elephant sit between us. It happens."

"You want to give me an out?"

"It bothers you."

Clark frowned. "Does it bother you?"

"You heard me in the Yukon. It doesn't bother me in the least. I mean, I get why you have more powers than I can count. I didn't really understand before but now I do. I get a lot of things and now feel like complete dirt for digging after your adoption."

"You didn't know."

She nodded and settled on the loft steps next to him. "I knew it bothered you. So, I...I know I just admitted I prod too much, but-"

He couldn't stop from smiling a little. "You want the full scoop?"

"Nah, that's not fair. I wasn't going to take it to The Planet. I said-"

"I know and I really believe you but it's not like it's unusual to have that reaction, to want to ask questions. I did."

Chloe blinked. "What?"

"When my dad told me in freshman year, I had so many more questions than you could imagine."

Chloe's jaw was hanging open. It was rare to stump her like that. "You didn't know?"

"Why would I?"

"I just assumed-"

"Bad habit for a journalist. No one told me until I was fourteen. I just thought I was weird."

"Jesus. That must have been so hard."

"It sucked," he replied, setting his hands on his knees. "I wanted to know everything: where I was from, what I was, if I'd always be this way."

"Always?"

"You know, everything kept changing and I got weirder and weirder. Sometimes I wondered if I'd still look human."

Soft arms were around him. "Clark, I really had no idea. If I had known, I'd have done anything to make it easier. I just had no idea."

Clark laughed bitterly. "I'm good. I mean I know you and Lex and Lana all have your suspicions, but I'm still good at what I do but I don't have to anymore."

"What?"

"It's what you missed. That big igloo? That's...it's hard to explain but it's a computer program that came with my ship and it's sort of thinks like my Kryptonian biological father."

"Kryptonian and sort of?"

"Krypton is where I'm from. It doesn't really exist anymore and that's the most I know about it, except that the computers were really advanced and that they suck. The igloo or whatever, wants me to take over the world."

Chloe's arms didn't even move, not one bit of hesitation. "I'm sorry. I didn't get it. No wonder you acted like you had so much that seemed to be going on under the surface. You did. Also, whatever that igloo is, can we firebomb it?"

"I doubt it'd take. Besides, it doesn't matter. I'm not 'obeying' him right. So he took my abilities away."

Chloe's eyes widened. "He what?"

"I don't have my abilities anymore. The whatever it was made me human or close enough."

"I don't think it works that way. I mean, if this thing has been after you for years to rule the world, you think it just gave up?"

"I think it realized I wasn't going to do things its way. I...I can be who I want to be, Chlo."

"With whom you want," she replied and it surprised him that he genuinely could hear no bitterness in her voice. She was his best friend, so much more important since Pete had left, but she didn't want to hoard him to herself anymore.

He appreciated it.

"Yeah, I...sorry I'm not a more impressive first contact."

She shrugged. "I still think that you shouldn't write this all off. If that thing is powerful enough to take your abilities, what if it gets madder?"

"It won't, Chlo. Hey, mom and dad are at the hospital still but visiting hours are over. I was wondering. We have a nice space heater and a very tiny tv with broadcast. I hear E.T. is on."

"You're avoiding."

"Maybe, but, Miss Sullivan, can you really pass up watching E.T. with an E.T. or not?"

"No, I really can't," she replied, racing him down the stairs.


End file.
